They blocked roads in Khayelitsha in Cape Town, Plettenberg Bay in the Western Cape and Umlazi near Durban. Two nearby community halls, meant to be used as voting ­stations, were torched.

“We’ve been forgotten,” said one protester. “Voting ANC is like digging your own grave.”

The ANC won 58 percent of the vote, down from 62 percent five years ago—and 70 percent in 2004.

Even this understates the ANC’s decline. A low turnout and millions of people not registering to vote meant that just 27 percent of those who could have voted backed the ANC. In 1994 that figure was 54 percent.

The party has failed to transform South Africa in the ­interests of the workers and the poor since the end of apartheid racial segregation in 1994.

Elizabeth Hashe from Soweto near Johannesburg said, “The ANC will claim victory but it is rotting. This is another big step towards its removal from government.”

The removal of Jacob Zuma as ANC leader and state president last year saved the ANC from an even more serious fall in its vote. Zuma presided over systematic corruption and ­looting from the state.

The super-rich Gupta family had business connections to Zuma and his family. A string of witnesses said the Guptas had influence over lucrative state contracts and appointments.

By 2017 mass protests and sit-ins called for Zuma’s removal. They came around the same time as “fees must fall” student protests that followed movements over ­university racism and exclusions.

Tortuous

After a tortuous internal struggle, Zuma was removed. This enabled some ANC critics to back the party again.

Big business had shrieked for Zuma’s removal because he was a destabilising element. In the main the corporations were reconciled to the ruling party once he was removed.

The South African Communist Party (SACP) announced in February 2018 that it could stand separately from the ANC at the next election. The SACP matters. It claims 280,000 members and has major influence in the unions.

Having been part of a “tripartite alliance” with the ANC and the Cosatu union federation for decades, a split would have been significant. But once Zuma went it shifted back to support the ANC.

Last month it wrote that “the ANC remains the only political formation on the ballot capable of leading this struggle”.

The Communist Party fully supported the ANC despite the painful lessons of the Zuma years. The ANC’s neoliberalism has no hope of creating jobs.

Ronnie Kasrils, former ANC cabinet minister

Former ANC cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils told Socialist Worker, “The SACP fully supported the ANC despite the painful lessons of the Zuma years. The ANC’s neoliberalism has no hope of creating jobs.

“The ANC still manages to pull nearly 60 percent because the African masses do not see any other party that gives them hope.

“There is a ‘liberation legacy’ of being the party that led the battle against ­apartheid—although it is growing ­increasingly thin.”

Zuma was replaced by Cyril Ramaphosa, who sums up the downward trajectory of the ANC.

He played a key role in the events, demanding “action” against the strikers.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), the ANC’s main parliamentary opposition, took 21 percent in the election, almost exactly the same as 2014.

The DA has its roots in some of the white parties that existed under apartheid but now has a mostly black leadership and support.

It grew by posing as a “clean” alternative to the ANC. But it openly backs big business and its manifesto called for mass privatisation. It opposed attempts to seize land for ­redistribution from the rich.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) saw the biggest rise in support. It went from 6 percent in 2014 to 11 percent this week.

Leader Julius Malema’s radical rhetoric has drawn in hundreds of thousands who suffer unemployment and poverty, and want real change.

The EFF manifesto ­highlighted the issue of land ownership and jobs. It claimed, “25 years since the attainment of political ­freedom, 80 percent of the population continues to occupy less than 10 percent of South Africa’s land.”

The EFF added, “More than seven million capable South Africans who need jobs are unemployed, with no hope that anything will change unless the current government is changed.”

But across the country it won just 25,000 votes, under 0.2 percent of the total. In its post-election statement the SRWP said, " Our revolutionary task now is to patiently, consistently and tirelessly explain the class content and character of not only the elections but of the parties that have won in these elections, to the working class and our members."

Numsa began talking about the launch of a new workers’ party more than five years ago.

But it hesitated, allowing the EFF to seize the time. Its manifesto put forward some excellent socialist policies, but there wasn’t enough time to create organisation on the ground.